Posts tagged ‘coursebooks’

This is a post from somebody who regular says ‘Why?! Why would they do that?’

It’s written to publishers and materials writers.

It’s a request for minor tweaks that would make using coursebooks just that tiny bit smoother.

And for occasional major changes that would make me more likely to use your coursebook (series) again and recommend it to other people.

I don’t believe many of them should cost that much extra money, just a little more thought. Do tell me which things might not work because they would be too expensive. It’s important for those of us who use your books to understand why certain things are or are not done/included.

They are borne out of both my own experience, and comments I have heard from colleagues over the years.

They are also inspired by some of the best coursebooks I’ve used, though none have ever been ‘perfect’ (what is?).

They are my opinions, and should be taken as such. No specific coursebooks will be mentioned.

(Though I completely agree with Kyle Dugan about the kind of coursebook I may want, I’m pretty sure it will never happen because I don’t believe it’s financially viable.)

Image taken by Sue Annan, from ELTpics (shared under a Creative Commons 3.0 licence)

Coursebooks

Introducing 20-30 out of context new items (which may be tangentially linked to the topic of the unit if you’re lucky) on a single page is not useful. Introducing them purely and simply through putting them into three exercises is even less useful. Doing this twice in a unit, giving 50-60 new items is just far too much. It overwhelms both the students and the teacher and is basically a waste of time. Choose your items carefully, contextualise them, and provide support in understanding the meaning, or show teachers how to do this in the teacher’s book.

Exam tasks are only helpful if you know which exam they’re for. Having an entire book where all of the skills tasks are ‘exam’ tasks without a clearly labelled exam that they relate to is just plain depressing.

Check that the reading and listening tasks are at a similar level of challenge to the grammar points and writing tasks that are being introduced. Reading and listening is often much easier, and occasionally much more challenging (though this may be because of the next point…) This gives students a false idea of their ability.

Include examples of more authentic sounding listening, plus listening skills work (this is thankfully already starting to change).

Provide editable versions of tapescripts and reading texts so that teachers can adapt them for their class, for example changing the formatting for students with dyslexia or creating gapfills from tapescripts. Even better, provide dyslexia-friendly versions of them yourself (I know this does cost money).

Don’t just list linking words, ask students to categorise them by function (adding, contrasting etc. – words the students don’t necessarily know either!), and assume they will understand the words and be able to use them. They are really important, really challenging, and I don’t think I’ve yet seen a coursebook which treats them in enough depth. (Feel free to prove me wrong).

Leave a bit of space on the page. I know it costs you a bit more to print like that, but thinking space is important, and avoids students feeling overwhelmed. They’re more likely to open your book (or I would be as a student!)

Label coursebook audio as clearly as possible in the book, preferably with the CD number and track if you’re using CDs, or the track number if it’s downloadable. Format CDs so that when you use them on a computer, the files are labelled in the same way, so you don’t have to spend ages trying to work out which track(s) you need or relabelling them all.

Consider using diagrams and infographics to explain grammar instead of massive long paragraphs of text whenever possible.

Check that gender is represented fairly and equally in both text and images. The same goes for race, sexuality, disability, and any other area where discrimination is a concern. Representation matters.

Make sure that book has been near a professional editor or team thereof, with enough time to do their job properly. Then listen to what they say. That should hopefully sort out some/most/all of the above problems.

Teacher’s book

A list of answers around the outside of a copy of the student’s book is not a teacher’s book, it’s an answer key. If that’s your approach, save paper and print it in the same way as the answer key for a workbook.

Give us ideas for how to adapt the activities on the page to suit our students. Tell us what typical problems students might have with the grammar or vocabulary. Offer ideas for games to play, especially for young learners and teens, but adults need them too. If you’re feeling really adventurous, provide ideas for homework that aren’t just the page from the workbook.

Suggest how to mark writing tasks – what criteria could I use? How do I know if the students have met these criteria?

If there are extra resources, like communicative activities for the students, and you hide them on a CD or a website, put very clear links in the teacher’s book to tell us to look for them.

Remember that the main people who use teacher’s books are probably new teachers, or teachers who are new to your series/style of book. Make the books as accessible and clear as possible. Explain any jargon you use, or provide a glossary.

Supporting tests

Thank you for creating tests that I can adapt for my classroom. They do make my life easier, most of the time. But…

Please don’t use random file formats. What is .tgd anyway?

Make the formatting as simple as possible./Ensure the person formatting your tests understands how to use Word (or whatever equivalent you use) fully! Embedded tables, random tabs or spaces all over the place, tasks that only go 2/3 of the way across the page so that when I try to edit the instructions it unnecessarily goes onto the next line when there’s 1/3 of the page left (that may not make sense, but I am happy to explain to any interested publishers!)…all of these things increase my stress levels unnecessarily.

Include a worked example for every exercise at every level, but especially for beginners, elementary and children.

Make them easy to find! Sometimes they’re on the website, sometimes they’re on a CD in the back of the teacher’s book, sometimes they’re on the software (which you may have to pay extra for – very annoying!)

Software

Remember that we live in a world of intuitive design. If yours isn’t, why bother? If I can’t learn how to use your software within 5 minutes, it’s not intuitive enough. I have better things to do with my time, and more useful websites I can use.

Don’t hide stuff in menus with loads of layers. Use icons.

If you include video, make sure it can be played full-screen.

Video and audio with clickable tapescripts is amazing!

Check that if you close the video/audio, you won’t close the software completely.

Make sure that your software adds value. If it’s just a glorified .pdf, just give me a .pdf instead of a whole separate piece of software!

Remember that we don’t all have interactive whiteboards. How easy is your software to use with just a projector? Can I use it on a Mac? Thus far I believe the answer to that is always no – what about making it .html instead of as specialist software, so that I’m not left out.

Random

I guess that most schools nowadays do not need one CD for every teacher’s set, so please don’t send them unless they are requested. My office has 3 or 4 sets of CDs for many books which are still in the plastic. This is a complete waste of resources: plastic, packaging, and time (yours and mine).

Remember that schools or students may not be able to afford the latest technology. Use the lowest common denominator for as long as possible, or offer alternative formats, or use a general format, like .pdf.

If you’re going to provide extra resources for students, make them as easy and intuitive to access as possible. If it takes too long, neither students nor teachers will bother, and it’s a waste of time and resources creating them. Remember that one or two well-placed and well-designed activities on a public website, preferably generative ones, can by used by teachers again and again, providing marketing for you if they keep recommending them to students too. This is perhaps a better use of your time and money than a super-complicated website hidden behind a paywall or a code.

Your turn

For a lot of teachers, it can be hard to find the time or the opportunity to observe and learn from other teachers’ lessons. If that’s you, hopefully you’ll find these videos useful.

I’ve divided them into loose categories, with a sentence or two to help you decide which are the most relevant to you. Within the categories, they’re just in the order I found them! I’d like to thank the many people who’ve sent me links to these videos over the years (though unfortunately I can’t remember exactly who sent me what!)

Please feel free to tell me about other videos I may have missed in the comments, as well as any broken links. I’d particularly appreciate any VYL, YL or teen videos that may be out there, though I know they may be hard to find.

P.S. I’ll admit that I haven’t watched all of these from start to finish, just bits and pieces, so please proceed with caution…

Very young learners

Hubert Puchta introducing vocabulary and using Total Physical Response (TPR) and telling an action story (7 minutes)

An American kindergarten teacher working in a French-language immersion school (27 minutes) (via David Deubelbeiss)

Teacher Allen singing a song and teaching a demo lesson with Chinese kindergarteners (10 minutes)

Another kindergarten lesson in China, this time with 33 children (30 minutes)

Michael Roxas working on adjectives, using TPR and introducing clothes with a kindergarten group, working with a Chinese teacher (27 minutes) Michael has other videos of him teaching kindergarten on his YouTube channel.

This video is designed to show teachers how to run a demo lesson, but there are also lots of useful tips in there and examples of how to set up activities (9 minutes)

Tanner Applegate teaching 3 year olds in China (6 minutes)

Marco Brazil teaching colours to very young learners (4 minutes)

Teaching weather to kindergarten children, with a Chinese teacher also in the room (15 minutes)

Introducing body parts (4 minutes)

Thanks very much to Lucy, who suggested in the comments that I look up kindergarten ESL teacher on YouTube, which led to most of the above videos!

Young learners

Adi Rajan suggested the Teacher Development films available on the British Council website, accompanied by workbooks. Here’s one example (52 minutes):

Marisa Constantinides playing the ‘please’ game, and thereby demonstrating total physical response (TPR) (8 minutes) She wrote about this activity, plus two more with accompanying videos (Thanks for letting me know, Marisa!)

Ashley Haseley teaching sensory reactions in China (12 minutes)

Kaila Smith talking about teaching children in China, with lots of clips from her classes (4 minutes)

Pass the bag, a video of a game shared by Ian Leahy (90 seconds)

Sam playing a days of the week game with Thai children (2 minutes)

This video shows you how to do guided reading with elementary learners – it’s mostly describing the technique, but there are various clips of the teacher at work (11 minutes)

A counting game for kids (2 minutes)

This is a video describing various classroom management techniques shared by Ian Leahy. Although there is a voiceover throughout the entire video, there are lots of clips of exactly what’s happening. (16 minutes)

Gunter Gerngross demonstrating TPR with young learners (3 minutes)

Karlee Demierre using a body parts song (3 minutes)

Introducing animal vocabulary in a demo lesson, with lots of flashcard games (32 minutes)

Teens

A shopping lesson with pre-intermediate students using Solutions Pre-Intermediate (17 minutes)

Buse Natalie Vickers teaching clothes (17 minutes)

Ross Thorburn introducing the rooms in a school (6 minutes)…

…and showing how unmonitored group work ran (35 seconds)

Ross Thorburn using flashcards with beginner young learners (1:10)…

…and with elementary young learners (1:30)

Ross also has tips for behaviour management, including live examples from class (5 minutes)…

…and demonstrating routines (7 minutes)

In this video, Ross introduces vocabulary, then takes his class into a shopping mall (8 minutes)

Adults (coursebook-based)

Sarah Troughear teaching a group using Life Pre-Intermediate, based on the topic of transport (60-minutes, including post-lesson analysis)

Clive Brown teaching a group using Life Upper Intermediate, based on the topic of documentary film-makers (37 minutes, including post-lesson analysis)

Andrew Walkley using an image to get students interested in a coursebook topic and lead in to a discussion (6 minutes)

Are you tired of your students running out of things to say? This book will show you 12 different ways to adapt a wide range of speaking activities to get more out of them in the classroom, divided into four categories:
– Preparing to speak
– Adding repetition
– Extending speech
– Having a reason to listen
There is a full index showing you what kind of activities the techniques work particularly well with, as well as worked examples of each technique in action. All of them are ready to take into the classroom with the minimum of preparation.

Richer Speaking is available to purchase at Smashwords and Amazon [affiliate links] and costs less than 1USD. It’s part of the roundminis series, all of which you can spot on their titles page by looking for similar covers to mine, and all available at the same bargain price.

I could never have done this without the help and encouragement of Lindsay Clandfield and Luke Meddings at the round and editor Karen White, as well as the people who helped me come up with some of the ideas included in the book. Thank you so much!

I hope you find Richer Speaking useful, and I would of course appreciate any and all feedback which you have.

Enjoy!

Reviews

I’ll try to collect any reviews that I see here. Thanks to everyone who has said such nice things about the book!

Some really great ideas for developing speaking tasks in Richer Speaking by @sandymillin. Feeling very inspired!

The short answer is: I have no idea, particularly since reading all the things written on various blogs over the last month or so, triggered by Geoff Jordan’s talk at the Innovate ELT conference.

I started writing a very rambling comment on his post about materials banks, and decided that I’d share it as a post instead as I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say with it, it’s late, and I don’t want to add such a rambling contribution with no clear point to such an in-depth discussion. Instead I’m posting it here, since I’m allowed to ramble on my own blog! Can anyone enlighten me on what I think?!

“[In one of the comments] Patrick said: “I’ve discussed this a lot with learners and they seem generally to agree that working with language that has emerged in their daily lives is more useful and more engaging than studying something simply because that’s what’s next in the coursebook.”

This is exactly how I was studying Russian. I told my teacher what experiences I’d had with Russian in the time since my previous lesson, and she gave me words and phrases I could use next time round. However, I was living in the country so had plenty of opportunities to experiment with the language, I’m very motivated, I’m an experienced language learner and teacher and like to think I know a fair amount about how I learn (in terms of what works for me), it was mostly mediated through English, the class was 121, and my teacher was good at coming up with things on the spot. When I didn’t have anything I wanted to cover, I’d tell her which bit of grammar I wanted her to show me so that I could start to notice it if I came across it. I was at A2-ish level by the end of a year, having already had Czech to build on. I’d learnt Czech by following a coursebook at my own speed, then having classes from my second year, mostly based on continuing the same coursebook, with some ad hoc lessons based on my immediate needs. It wasn’t as fast, but it did help me to know what I could study next, especially for a language with not many materials out there. If any of the conditions for my Russian classes hadn’t been fulfilled, I doubt it would have been anywhere near as useful for me, but I have to say I learnt it 3 times as fast as I did Czech as I got to the same level in a third of the time (I did a lot more self-study too though!)

I wish I could have lessons like that with all of my students, but when I was teaching last year my students had almost no exposure to English in their daily lives unless they actively sought out things on the Internet – it was hard to get ‘real’ books, films, etc in English where I was living. When they came to class with something different, we always looked at that rather than coursebook, and we often went off on tangents. They’d bought coursebooks though and in some of the bigger groups it was a unifying factor, with me adapting, extending and rejecting bits as I thought necessary.

I also showed them ways of extending their learning outside the classroom through the use of tools like Quizlet, offering them pre-vetted sets of vocabulary (vetted for accuracy, level of challenge, appropriacy etc.) which they could choose from, and shared my experience of learning languages to attempt to encourage them to try different methods out. Despite repeatedly demonstrating and encouraging them to use these techniques, they pretty much all defaulted back to lists of translations, with the occasional outlier of a student who actually tried to e.g. record vocabulary with a picture/English definition/collocations etc. When I tried to find out what they were interested in or what they wanted to study, I had the same experience as one of the commenters above, with them telling me I was the teacher and should decide. I’m not attempting to argue that the coursebook was the best answer in this situation, just describing my experience.

I’m still not really sure I could put together a personalised syllabus that would be very detailed at the beginning of a course if I didn’t already know a lot about a group of learners – this is the main area where I struggle, since if I’m not using a course book, I tend to work on a lesson-by-lesson basis. That’s fine if it’s low stakes, but as soon as you factor in exams or anything else high stakes, it puts a lot of added pressure on the teacher. I did once try to teach an intensive FCE course without a book by selecting materials from a range of places, but the students complained about the randomness of it and we ended up using an exam prep book instead. I think putting together a syllabus is a challenging skill, and not something I’ve ever found/had effective training in. I’ve never really found a readable, accessible guide to putting one together either (the ones I’ve seen have been pretty dry and I’ve never found them very helpful).

I guess I’m saying that although I know that coursebooks aren’t necessarily the best way, I’ve found them a useful support structure as a teacher, and I have learnt from them as a student, even though I know that it’s not been the fastest way for me to learn.”

I spoke to my students yesterday about why we talk about a reading passage after reading it, and don’t just move on. There are 3 of them, aged 12-13, in that class.

Their comments, and the order they came out with them, were quite telling:

because we’re going to study future continuous (the grammar point on the facing page)

because we need it later (i.e. as adults)

just because

because it’s about the environment and we need to know about that

When I suggested it might be to help me see how much of the text and the ideas in it they understood, they seemed quite surprised. They certainly weren’t particularly engaged in the topic itself (changes a boy and his family were making to their life to be more environmentally friendly).

[And yes, I know I shouldn’t necessarily have just done the next page in the book, but I’d been at home all morning because there’d been a small fire in my flat!]

This morning my students spent over an hour discussing and debating their opinions of what a Utopia should be like. All of this was prompted by a single page from the Total English Intermediate teacher’s book.

On page 124 of the teacher’s book there is a list of rules about a possible Utopia, designed to revise modals of obligation and permission (must, have to, should). Students work alone to decide if they agree or disagree with the rules, then get together to debate a final version of their Utopia.

This single sheet prompted discussion about whether taxes were necessary, whether governments really need weapons, the benefits of living in a foreign country, and whether one language should be allowed to dominate the world.

One of the ways you can identify an EFL teacher is by the amount of random information they can spew about all kinds of topics under the sun, much of which is gleaned from the coursebooks they use. Here is a small selection of the random things (I think) I have learnt about, which may or not be right!

The following things were invented by women: Kevlar, disposable nappies, windscreen wipers and the dishwasher (New English File Pre-Intermediate)

The people who invented Coca Cola and clothes hangars never made any money from their inventions (one of the New Headway books – can’t remember which)

A French artist created an exhibition based on the break-up email she received from her (ex-)boyfriend called ‘Prenez soin de vous‘ – ‘Take Care of Yourself’ (New English File Advanced)

Influenza+Affluence=Affluenza – being too affluent can make you ill (New English File Advanced)

The World’s Funniest Joke has been determined by science – and is only funny the first time you read it! (New English File Advanced, as well as in another book which I can’t remember

A man cheated in the New York Marathon in the 1920s by getting a lift for about 20 miles of the course (New English File Intermediate)

Slow living is much more satisfying – I first read about Slow Food and Slow Cities in English coursebooks, including New English File Intermediate and Advanced Expert CAE and have now read “In Praise of Slowness” which I really enjoyed too

So that’s my selection. What’s the most interesting thing you’ve learnt from a coursebook?

My (e)books

30 tasks for new teachers to help them learn to reflect on their teaching, as well as build up an online community. Also great as a refresher for experienced teachers, or as session prompts for trainers and managers. All for just £5/€5.50 - less than the price of a cinema ticket! (self-published)
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A collection of techniques for adapting speaking activities. Click the image to read more and to find links to purchase it for less than 1 USD a copy! (Published by the round)

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#eltpics is a collection of photos, based on a weekly theme, taken by ELT teachers, trainers and writers from around the world.
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Quizlet

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